


Out of Fashion

by chaletian



Category: Chalet School - Brent-Dyer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-25
Updated: 2010-05-25
Packaged: 2017-10-09 17:23:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaletian/pseuds/chaletian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jo comes to a harsh realisation about her career as a writer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of Fashion

It was embarrassing, no two ways about it. Jo Maynard was honest enough to admit it, loath as she was to do so. She sat in the salon at Freudesheim, and glanced at the manuscript sitting on a side table. Well, there it was. “For the Honour of the Fourth”, by Josephine M. Bettany. Never to be published. Not in touch with the youth of today, Henry Crowther, her publisher, had written. Thank you very much for submitting it, Mrs Maynard. Your books have always been popular in the past, Mrs Maynard. More clichés in the same sort of vein, but undeniably a rejection.

It was a jolt to her identity, Jo realised, crossing her legs and attempting to be mature about it. Her books had happily sold ever since she sent of Cecily, and the concept of rejection – the possibility of which she had accepted readily in her youth – had become rather distant. But here it was, and she found herself quite unprepared for it, and rather loath to send Honour round to anyone else, because surely if Crowthers weren’t prepared to publish it, no-one else would.

Was she out of touch? She didn’t think so, not exactly. It wasn’t as if she had any shortage of young people to talk to! But thinking about it, the kind of books you saw in the children’s section of bookshops these days were different to those of her youth. School stories seemed to be more scarce. Things went in and out of fashion, she knew that, and it seemed that she was now determinedly out of fashion.

“We would be happy to see more of your adult novels,” Henry Crowther had written, and Jo realised that she hadn’t written an adult novel for some time – over five years; closer to ten, when she thought about it. She’d written a few historicals, true, but for the children’s market. Laziness, she realised, and her cheeks burned with shame. She’d chosen periods she’d known well, settings she could write about without worrying over details.

There it was. She’d got into a rut, one of those tedious children’s writers one sometimes met, who churned out repetitive, formulaic books with little thought to originality, or creativity, or literary integrity. Jo made a long arm, and settled Honour on her lap. Flicking through, she read some of the passages.

_Helen lifted an eyebrow at the Middle standing before her, and merely said sharply, “Less cheek from the likes of you, please! Take an order mark, and go to your form-room immediately!” The errant Middle – Alice Harper – turned on her heel, shot a mutinous look at the prefect over her shoulder, and returned to her compeers. Helen herself stifled a chuckle, and returned to the sanctum of the prefects’ room, there to lament to the others the problems of the Middles._

. . .

_“They don’t trust us, not a jot!” declared Hilary, standing on her desk in strict obliviousness to the rules. The others clustered round her, always ready for a little rebellion against their Seniors.  
_

. . .

_“What rot those kids talk,” remarked Helen. “Don’t take any notice of them, Cherry, dear.”  
“But one can’t help but take notice,” said the Head Girl, rather anxiously. “They can cause such dreadful trouble when they’re roused.”  
“I’ll say!” put in Anne, warming her hands in front of the fire. “Remember that row they got into last term?”  
_  
“Matey would tell me to chuck it on the fire,” Jo said to herself absently, then, with a surge of decision, did just that, poking vigorously at the pages with a poker until they were all alight and she had narrowly avoided setting the chimney on fire.

She was out of date. She could admit it. She had been too lazy to write properly. She could admit that, too. It was even possible – and this was the hardest to admit – that some of her friends had realised this too, and been too polite to mention it. The thought of Hilda or Nell reading one of her books and seeing how bad it was, made Jo cringe, but she had the – more or less unsettling, she couldn’t decide which – suspicion that neither of them read her books anyway. Not their style.

And there was Con, being published, although she had only just finished at Oxford, and was officially working for a weekly women’s paper. Jo wasn’t sure of the details – Con had been quite close-mouthed about the whole thing, and only sent a telegram informing her parents of the good news. Hot on its heels had come the package from Crowthers. Good of them to return it, really – they didn’t usually. Was she jealous of her daughter? Jo considered the question as dispassionately as she could manage. Well, yes. Maybe it was that feeling women had in books, when they realised that their daughter was growing up, taking their place. Youth, beauty, talent. Not beauty, really – Jo had accepted long ago that she would never be a beauty, and had never particularly aspired to it. She was striking, and that would remain, and she wasn’t too modest to be glad about it. But youth, and talent… Oh, heavens, of course she was jealous!

But she wouldn’t say, wouldn’t give any indication. Jo’s resolution firmed. She would be proud – she was proud of Con. And she would look at her own writing, and try harder. Write an adult novel, and really think about it; do it properly. Write something she could be proud of her, and her family, and her friends. She would be damned if she just gave up, sinking into obscurity when she still had talent. She knew she had talent! She just wouldn’t be so lazy about it any more. With a final poke at the smouldering remains of “For the Honour of the Fourth”, Jo Maynard began planning her next book.

THE END


End file.
